Literacy: Reading
The Breadwinner by Deborah Ellis
P5/6 excitedly started their adventure with our new class novel “The Breadwinner” by Deborah Ellis which is set in Afghanistan. They discussed their prior knowledge and questions about the country, explored the term “breadwinner,” and became book detectives, searching for and finding details about the author, characters, and setting. We look forward to exploring Afghanistan’s rich culture and following Parvana’s journey in this interesting and engaging novel. We will be learning about stereotypes, children’s rights, inequalities, geography, culture and history throughout this novel.
Literacy: Spelling
P5/6 were given the freedom to choose their own spelling activities to revise our ‘ks’ words. From intense spelling battleships to focused word mats, and even creative written tasks, their dedication to mastering the ‘ks’ phoneme was ambitious to say the least.
World Book Day
7th March 2024
Primary 5/6 had great fun celebrating all things reading last week for World Book Day thank you to the Reading Schools Committee for coming up with ideas and Mrs Sweeney for pulling their ideas together! They participated in a book themed scavenger hunt, guess the teacher (by identifying their childhood photo and favourite childhood book), book swap, author visit, writing a whole school story, and literacy open afternoon.
The author visit was inspiring as pupils had the opportunity to listen to how Rachel McGaw first got into writing and how she gets inspiration for the books she writes. Pupils also listened to a sneak peak of a fairy tale that she has not yet released.
Thank you to parents and family members that were able to come along to our open afternoon too! The pupils had the opportunity to share some of the tasks they complete in day-to-day literacy lessons linked to reading and spelling.
World Book Day – Buddy Reading
Primary 5/6 had a lovely experience during our visit to Hallhouse Care Home last Friday as part of our Reading Schools Buddy Reading Project. The pupils had the opportunity to read stories and share conversations with the residents. The visit helped pupils to build confidence when reading aloud as well as empathy and understanding of the residents needs. Super work P5/6!
Literacy: Writing
Biography Writing
Last week Primary 5/6 learned all about biographies and what type of information they included. They then participated in a class discussion to set themselves a success criteria for writing a biography. Following this they created questions for Mr Houston that would provide them with the information required to achieve each aspect of their success criteria.
We then invited Mr Houston along this week to be interviewed by the class. Throughout the interview process we regularly referred back to each aspect of the success criteria to ensure that we were gathering the appropriate information. The pupils took notes as and when their questions were being answered.
Finally, the pupils used these notes to write their own biography all about the life of Mr Houston. Not only did they find out lots of interesting information about Mr Houston but they also produced some excellent pieces of work.
Have a read at this week’s STAR WRITERS work!
Literacy: Roald Dahl Day
13th September 2023
Last week it was Roald Dahl Day (the authors birthday) so we used this as a stimulus for some of our learning. During grammar, the pupils continued practicing using parenthesis to add extra information to their writing. They used the books, Matilda and The Twits, written by Roald Dahl to find some sentences they could ‘up-level’. They did a fantastic job – I am sure you will agree!
In the afternoon, P5/6 buddied up with P1/2 and told them who Roald Dahl was then shared some of his stories with the P1/2 pupils. Primary 5/6 were focusing on using expression and reading with fluency. They also used some of their metalinguistics skills to explain the emaning of unfamiliar words to the younger pupils.
Literacy – Reading
Predictions
Yesterday, Primary 5/6 were introduced to their class novel. The pupils will be reading Street Child by Berlie Doherty and will be learning and developing a range of reading skills through the use of the class novel. The novel is set in Victorian times and is about an orphan child. This will also link in with our IDL topic this term which the class are excited about.
The pupils kick started their work on the class novel by creating predictions about what they think might happen. They discussed their predictions in pairs before writing them in their jotters. The pupils used limited information (the blurb and some newspaper reviews of the novel) to make ‘sensible’ predictions and to justify their thoughts before unwrapping the novel to see what it was.
I was super impressed by their enthusiasm and effort on their first day back after a long break!
East Ayrshire Council site
